Community welcomes friends home

There’s a campfire burning low.
Around it are several lawn chairs.
The conversation is low as well. No one’s speaking very loudly. It’s just a bunch of old guys kicking around the events of the past few days or maybe the past few years.
And while it’s a gathering of equals, one guy’s voice merits special attention.
When Woody Turner has something to say, the others around the campfire listen.
His hair is cut in a flat-top. He’s wearing — as usual — a white t-shirt and a pair of jeans. He’s wearing glasses, and there’s a gap between his front teeth when he smiles. And he smiles a lot.
The year could be 1966 or maybe 1974 or maybe a dozen other years.
But the reason these guys are gathered around the campfire and the reason they’re all listening to Woody is the same: They love old machinery.
They love the way it sounds. They love to fix it when it breaks down. They love to bring it back to life. They love to tell stories about it.
Old engines — like the kind Woody and a handful of friends started restoring in the 1960s — and old tractors — like the ones their fathers let them steer through fields when the guys around the campfire were just kids — brought them together.
And they have continued to bring them together for 50 years now.
What’s the allure of the Jay County Fairgrounds?
The shade?
The amenities?
The welcoming community?
All of those are fine, but the real draw is the relationships — the brotherhood and, these days, the sisterhood — of those who love old machines.
Like those machines, they can be cantankerous. They can be noisy. They can balk and sputter at times.
But there’s nothing else like them on earth.
It’s chance, for the most part, that the Tri-State Gas Engine and Tractor Association has made Jay County home now for five decades.
It seemed an unlikely venture at the start, then grew beyond anyone’s expectations, certainly beyond the expectations of those good old boys gathered around that campfire in their lawn chairs so many years ago.
Welcome home. — J.R.